Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “You know perfectly well, or you cursed well ought to.” Krasta tried to hold on to her defiance. Against Lurcanio, that was next to impossible. He had the edge on her, just as Algarve’s army had had the edge on Valmiera’s a year and a half before.

  And he knew it. “Suppose you tell me,” he repeated. “Suppose you tell me in great detail. Come in and sit down; do make yourself comfortable. And close the door behind you.”

  Krasta obeyed. She was very conscious of obeying, of following his will rather than her own. It chafed at her, like trousers too tight in the crotch. Trying to get a little freedom, a little breathing space, she gave Lurcanio a saucy smile and said, “Your men will think I came her for another reason.” She’d done that once, on a whim, and certainly had distracted Lurcanio from whatever he’d been working on.

  She did not distract him today. “Let my men think whatever they please,” he said. “You came down here to tell me you had heard . .. certain things. Now you do not seem to want to tell me what these things are. I need to know that.” He waited, looking at her.

  Again, Krasta felt herself obeying. Because she was obeying and not doing as she wanted--as she did whenever she was not around Colonel Lurcanio--she gave it to him full in the face: “Is it true that Algarve is taking Kaunians out of Valmiera or Jelgava or ... or wherever”--she’d been shaky in geography, as she’d been shaky in a good many subjects at the academies she’d sometimes (often briefly) graced--“and doing horrible things to them off in barbarous Unkerlant?”

  “Oh. That.” Lurcanio gestured dismissively, as if flicking a speck off his tunic. “I thought you were talking about something important, my sweet. No, it is not true that we are taking people out of Valmiera or Jelgava or doing anything to them anywhere. There. Is that plain enough?”

  She didn’t notice he hadn’t answered quite all of her questions; had she paid closer attention at one of her academies or unfinished finishing schools, perhaps she might have. But his assertion didn’t lay a fortnight’s rumors to rest at a stroke, either. “Then why do people say you are?” she persisted.

  “Why?” Lurcanio sighed. “Have you not seen for yourself that most people--especially most common people--are fools and will repeat anything they hear, as if they were so many trained jackdaws?”

  That, aimed at Krasta, was a shrewder stroke. “I certainly have!” she exclaimed. “The commoners who aren’t fools are commonly knaves. Commoners... commonly.” She laughed. She made jokes mostly by accident, and didn’t always recognize them even then. When she did, she felt uncommonly pleased with herself.

  Lurcanio laughed, too, more than the feeble wordplay deserved. “There--you see? Out of your own mouth you convict these liars. Have any of your friends disappeared? Have any of your servants disappeared? Have any of their friends disappeared? Of course not. How could we hope to keep such a thing secret if it were so? It would be impossible.”

  “Aye, so it would,” Krasta admitted. Had anything truly been going on in Valmiera, the rumors would have been juicier, full of more details. Now that she thought about it, she saw that plain. Still. . . “Why does Kuusamo war on you, then?”

  “Why?” Colonel Lurcanio raised an elegantly sardonic eyebrow. “I’ll tell you why, my sweet: because the Seven Princes are jealous of our triumphs, and look for any excuse to tear us down.”

  “Ah.” Again, that made sense to Krasta. She’d done the same thing to social rivals and had it done to her. She nodded.

  Now Lurcanio’s smile was charming again. He pushed his chair back and away from his desk. The chair was Algarvian military issue; its brass wheels squeaked. “As long as you are here, do you care to give my men something to gossip about?”

  This time, his voice held no command. He never tried to force Krasta in such matters: not overtly, anyhow. Had she chosen to walk out the door, he would never have said a word about it. Not least because she was free to refuse, she decided not to. Knowing the other Algarvian officers would be jealous of Lurcanio didn’t hurt, either. She sank to her knees in front of him and flipped up his kilt.

  Having eased her mind (and her body; Lurcanio was scrupulous about returning such favors), she went back to her bedchamber to choose a cloak for the day’s journey through the shops of Priekule. Bauska was no help. With her, what people called morning sickness lasted all day long. She was liable to gulp and flee at any moment. If that was what carrying a child meant, Krasta wanted no part of it.

  Her driver, also muffled against the chill of approaching winter, took the carriage to the Boulevard of Horsemen. As soon as he handed her down onto the street, he took a flask out of his pocket and swigged from it. That would help keep him warm, or at least make him stop caring he was cold.

  Krasta was more intent on what she would do than on what her servitor was doing. The Boulevard of Horsemen, which held Priekule’s finest shops, was not what it had been before the Algarvians came. Far fewer people walked--paraded, really--along its splendid sidewalks. Many who did were redheaded soldiers in kilts. Shopkeepers did good business with them, at any rate; as often as not, packages filled their arms. Krasta’s smile was nasty as she watched a couple of Algarvians emerge from a shop that sold lingerie. Would the silks and lace they’d bought adorn their Valmieran mistresses or go home to keep their wives happy and unsuspecting?

  She wished Lurcanio would buy her presents there. If he didn’t, though, the world wouldn’t end. Several earlier lovers already had. The dainties rested in a drawer in her bedchamber, smelling of cedar to hold the moths at bay.

  A few doors past the lingerie shop stood a clothier’s Krasta enjoyed visiting. She peered past the peeling gold leaf in the window to see what new things he was displaying. If she didn’t stay up with fashion, Lurcanio might decide to buy lingerie for someone else.

  She stopped and stared. The nearly military cut of the new tunics and trousers on display wasn’t what caught her eye. She had never imagined a Valmieran clothier would put kilts out for sale after Algarve beat her own kingdom in war. It struck her as indecent--no, worse, un-Kaunian.

  But out of a dressing room stepped a young blond woman wearing a kilt that stopped a couple of inches above her knees and left the rest of her legs bare. “Indecent,” Krasta muttered. She’d worn kilts before the war, but now? It seemed a far more public admission of defeat than taking an Algarvian lover. But the clothier’s assistant clapped her hands in delight, while her customer reached into the pockets of the trousers she wasn’t wearing any more and paid for the kilt.

  I won’t shop there again, Krasta thought, and walked on, discontented. She stepped into a jeweler’s, looking for earrings, but he had nothing that suited her. She reduced the shop girl to tears before leaving. That restored most of the good humor she’d lost standing in front of the clothier’s.

  And then, walking up the street toward her, she saw Viscount Valnu. He waved gaily and went from a walk up to a trot. Krasta stiffened and turned away. Valnu was wearing a kilt.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked, and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

  She turned away again, not playfully as she so often had, but in grim earnest. “What’s the trouble?” she echoed. “I’ll tell you what’s the trouble. That’s the trouble.” She pointed in the general direction of the kilt. On a man even more than on a woman, it seemed an admission--even a celebration--of defeat.

  Valnu pretended not to understand. “What, my knees?” Wicked laughter filled his thin, handsome face. “My pet, you’ve seen a great deal more of me than my knees.”

  “Never on the street,” Krasta ground out.

  “Oh, you have so,” Valnu said. “That time you ended up shoving me out of your carriage--we weren’t just on the bloody street, we were in it.”

  “That’s different,” Krasta said, though she couldn’t have told him how. Then she asked the question that was really on her mind: “How can you stand to wear it?”

  “How can I stand it?” Ever the opportunist, Valnu rested a
hand on her hip. “Sweetling, the way things are, I should hardly dare not to don the kilt, wouldn’t you say? It’s protective coloration.”

  Krasta might have heard the phrase once or twice, but it made no sense to her here. Impatiently, she said, “What are you talking about?”

  “What I said,” Valnu answered. “You know, the butterflies that look like dry leaves when they fold up their wings and the bugs that look like twigs, all so the birds can’t eat ‘em. If I look like an Algarvian ...” His voice trailed away.

  “Oh.” Krasta wasn’t the cleverest woman in Valmiera, but she saw what he meant. “They aren’t really doing that. I don’t think they’re really doing that. Lurcanio says they aren’t doing that. If they were, we’d have heard about people who went missing, don’t you think?”

  “Not if they didn’t go missing from Valmiera,” Valnu said.

  “We’d have heard about Jelgava, too, or the Jelgavan nobility would have, and they would have started screaming their heads off. We’d have heard that,” Krasta said. It was Lurcanio’s argument, but it had convinced her, and she made it her own.

  If it didn’t convince Valnu, it made him thoughtful. “Maybe,” he said at last. “Just maybe. By the powers above, how I wish it could be true. Still and all, though”--he ran the hand that wasn’t on Krasta’s hip down his kilt--”better not to take chances. Law of similarity and all that. And don’t I look splendid?”

  “You look grotesque.” Krasta exercised tact only around Colonel Lurcanio. “As grotesque as an Algarvian in trousers. It looks unnatural.”

  “You say the sweetest things. I’ll tell you what it is, though.” Valnu leaned toward her, almost close enough for his tongue to touch her ear as he whispered, “It’s bloody drafty, that’s what.”

  He startled a laugh out of Krasta, despite her best intentions. “Serves you right,” she said. This time, when Valnu tried to kiss her on the cheek, she let him. He went on his way cheerfully enough, but she found she could get no more pleasure out of shopping and rode back to her mansion in a glum and dour mood.

  “Coming on!” an Algarvian soldier shouted in bad Unkerlanter. “More firewoods!”

  “Aye, more firewood,” Garivald said, and dumped his bundle at the redhead’s feet. Every branch the Algarvians burned was one the villagers of Zossen couldn’t, but anyone who complained got blazed. No one complained, then--not where the Algarvians could hear.

  It could have been worse. Only a squad or so of Algarvians garrisoned the village. The men of Zossen could have risen and wiped them out. The men of a village a few miles away had risen and killed all of Mezentio’s soldiers there. That village was gone now. The Algarvians had brought in more soldiers, behemoths, and dragons, and wiped it off the face of the earth. The peasant men were dead. The women . . . Garivald didn’t want to think about the women.

  His friend Dagulf thumped a load of firewood at the Algarvian’s feet. The fellow nodded and gave a theatrical shiver. He might not speak much Unkerlanter, but, like a lot of redheads Garivald had seen, he had a gift for gestures. “Cold,” he said. “Very cold.”

  Garivald nodded; disagreeing with the occupiers didn’t pay. Dagulf nodded, too. They caught each other’s eye. Neither laughed or even smiled, though Garivald knew he felt like it. It was only a little below freezing, and might even get about it by the middle of the day. If the Algarvian thought this was cold, he hadn’t seen anything yet.

  After they’d got out of earshot of the redhead, Dagulf said, “He hasn’t got the clothes he needs for this kind of weather.”

  “No,” Garivald said, and then, “Too bad.” He and Dagulf did laugh now. Garivald scratched. His calf-length wool-tunic was twice as thick as the one the Algarvian wore. Beneath it, he had on a wool undertunic, wool drawers, and wool stockings. He was perfectly comfortable. When winter came on, he’d add a thick wool cloak and a fur hat. He wouldn’t be perfectly comfortable then, but he’d manage.

  “Wouldn’t catch me wearing one of those little short kilts,” Dagulf said.

  “Curse me if I’ll argue with you,” Garivald said. “First blizzard comes, it’d freeze right off.” He paused meditatively. “Might be the best thing that could happen to the whoresons, eh?”

  “Aye.” Dagulf pulled a sour face. “They’re a lickerish lot, Mezentio’s buggers. Looks like they’ll swive anything that moves--and if it doesn’t move, they’ll shake it.”

  “That’s so,” Garivald said. “We’ve already had more scandal since they came than for years before. And afterwards, the women say the soldiers made ‘em do it and they didn’t have a choice, but a lot of ‘em look pretty cursed contented while they say it. All this Algarvian swaggering and hand-kissing and what have you spoils ‘em, you ask me.”

  Dagulf said something vaguely related to hand-kissing. He and Garivald let out loud, coarse laughs. Then he said, “You ought to make a song about it--a song that’d keep our women from lying down with the redheads, I mean.”

  “Nothing will keep them from lying down if it’s that or be blazed,” Garivald observed. “You can’t blame ‘em for that. But the other . . .” His voice trailed away. His expression went slack and distant. Dagulf had to nudge him to get him to keep walking. He murmured, “We’d have to be careful where we sung it.”

  Dagulf grunted. “So we would.” He pointed toward Waddo, the firstman, who was limping toward them across the village square. With the ground pardy frozen, Waddo’s stick got better purchase than it had when everything was knee-deep in mud. Dagulf went on, “Algarvians aren’t the only reason we’d have to be careful, either.”

  “He wouldn’t betray us to the redheads,” Garivald said, but then softened that by adding, “I don’t think.”

  “He might,” Dagulf said darkly. “Selling us out is about the only way I can think of that he’d get himself in good with the Algarvians.”

  “He hasn’t pulled anything like that yet, powers above be praised.” Garivald knew something else that might make King Mezentio’s men happy with Waddo. If the firstman led them to the buried crystal, they might forgive him for having buried it. And if he wasn’t sure they would, he might try to blame everything on Garivald, who’d helped him hide it.

  “Hello, hello,” Waddo said as he came up to them at last. “A very good day to you both, I am sure.” He didn’t sound so sure of anything as he had before the Algarvians seized Zossen. He remained firstman, and did their bidding when they gave him any bidding to do, but he’d lost most of the authority he’d had as the nearest approach to King Swemmel’s representative in the village. As far as King Mezentio’s men were concerned, he was just a dog slightly larger than the other dogs in Zossen--and much more likely to be kicked.

  “Good day,” Garivald and Dagulf said together. Dagulf pointed to Garivald and added, “Our friend here may be in the way of coming up with a new song.”

  Garivald wished he hadn’t said even so much. Waddo, however, beamed. “I saw him looking all dreamy, so I hoped he might be. A new song would help make the long, cold winter nights pass quicker.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Garivald said. Now he’d have to come up with an ordinary song as well as the one urging the village women not to give themselves to Algarvian soldiers. He hoped “Waddo wouldn’t hear that one, even if the firstman had a daughter of an age, if not of a beauty, to draw the redheads’ notice.

  “If it’s half as good as a couple you’ve come up with, it’ll be twice as good as a lot of the ones we’ve known for years,” Waddo said. “A minstrel in our own village--a songsmith, no less. Who would have thought it?”

  “I thank you,” Garivald said shyly. The idea that he could make songs still astonished him.

  “No, we thank you. You do us credit.” Waddo was very effusive. Is he laying it on too thick? Garivald wondered. Is he trying to lull me to sleep so he can sell me to Mezentio’s men? He wondered if he ought to dig up the crystal and hide it somewhere only he knew or throw it in a creek. If he could do it without bein
g noticed, that might prove wise.

  Of course, if the Algarvians caught him digging up the crystal, they’d blaze him, or maybe just hang him with a placard round his neck warning others not to do as he had done. Did Waddo want him to try something foolish? That way, he’d be punished, leaving the firstman in the clear. Garivald shook his head, as if to knock such notions out of it. He hated having to think that way.

  “Aye, a new song would be fine,” Waddo said. “Anything that takes our minds off our empty bellies would be fine.”

  “It would have been a good harvest,” Dagulf said mournfully. “If we’d got to keep more of it, it would have.”

  “The redheads--” Waddo’s head went back and forth in the automatic cautious gesture the rest of the villagers had always used to make sure he wasn’t around before they spoke some of their minds. He didn’t see anything untoward--Garivald knew because he looked around, too--but he didn’t say much, either, contenting himself with a sigh and the remark, “That can’t be helped.”

  “Neither can grasshoppers,” Dagulf said. Garivald contrived to step on his foot; the other peasant wasn’t thinking enough before he spoke today.

  Waddo nodded. Garivald didn’t trust him even so. The firstman might find favor with the Algarvians by betraying other villagers, too.

  After as little small talk as he could get away with and still stay polite, Garivald went back to his house and told Annore, “I’m going out to the woods again. This time, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to cut some firewood for us, too, not just for the redheads.”

  “That would be good,” his wife said. “If you could knock a squirrel out of a tree with a rock or club a rabbit or two, that would be even better.”